Star Names Beta 2 - Suggestion/Request

i love this idea i imagine that the first person to 'discover' it gets to name it so it would kind of lead to some cultural flavour for the galaxy as different ai races would use their own historic names.

Or, you could just post all the names you think are ALMOST okay and see if one of creator notices, and follows up with you in the forum.

Now you're harshing my purr. The numbers 19512014 are not "superfluous".  They have meaning.  And I paid a hundred bucks for the privilege of putting them there. 

But seriously, are you aware of the actual astronomical naming conventions in use, such as Messier or NGC/IC?  Why not peruse the Messier Catalog? You'll find lots of "superfluous" numbers. You can find it here:

http://messier.seds.org/

I am curious why you think something like

Cheers!

I can't believe someone spent good money and picked some of those names. Must be teenage boys.

I spent some time and went through the entire XML file (after making a copy) and altered/fixed any names that I felt broke immersion for me. In most cases I tried not to stray too much from the original founders star name but I did make them more in-line with what we are used to seeing in the game.

My main rule of thumb was imagining Captain Picard saying... "Captain's log, supplemental... We are en rout to the [INSERT STAR NAME HERE] system..." If I could hear Patrick Stewart speaking the name without it being completely ridiculous I kept it. Otherwise I altered them to make them believably spoken by him while trying as best I could to retain the original concept. Now my game looks good to me!

Didn't you just KNOW there would be someone complaining about some of the star names? I think the advice to individuals to edit the names is good advice.

"That's not a moon, that's Land Of The Mole!"

"On planets that surrounded the Star PurpleBirkyJCMJ, the rebels planned their assault!"

"Come! See and tremble at our military might, based on planets in our home system, where it's very name fuels the Drengins' nightmares - Binary Toast!!"

Just going through the approved list...

Don't get what people mean when they say the Star names "ruin the immersion". I mean, if you want GalCiv3 to be serious, the first thing you should get rid of is the jerky robot that tells you when you've finished researching something. Not as funny as the one from GalCiv2, but it looks dorky nevertheless.

I appreciate that the starnames mean a lot to the people who picked them but they either mean nothing to me or are actively repulsive.

I've looked up the starnames file but there's nothing in it; looked in schema/lib - still nothing.

Is there a way to substitute my own starname list?

I agree. Discoverers get to name things.  All kinds of weird names get attached to things. Drunken unschooled ship captains bumped into things all the time that needed names.  There are all sorts of languages with strange sounds and words, who am I to judge?  I think the weirder and stranger the name, the more immersive.  And sure, I think some stars are named after somebody's wife, but that is pretty much what one should expect at the dawn of (insert breakthrough exploration technology here) when normal inebriated explorers stumble into unamed stuff.  It's only later that pompous, self-righteous blue-noses come along and "correct" the "obviously-in-need-of-correction" names.  There are reference books that tell the story of revisionist naming. A lot of color and humor is lost as a result. I recall once not too long ago when a plains state had to change the name of a place called "Nellie's Ni**les", located at the base of twin mountain peaks, because Rand-McNally (they published a special kind of "book" called an "atlas") wouldn't print the real name. No doubt a place "discovered" and named by a drunken unschooled trapper.  And weren't two actual U. S. Spacecraft  named "Charlie Brown" and "Snoopy"?  Why, yes, they were the Command Module and Lunar Module for Apollo 10. How dare NASA break the immersion! Let's go hack the history files and alter the XML and rename those to something an imaginary starship captain can be imagined saying.

So free speech and tolerance should be exercised with respect to naming things. Geez, have you ever seen what some people name species?

On a serious note, I think it's worth mentioning that the spacecraft "Snoopy" is the only once-manned U.S. spacecraft still in outer space without a crew. That's kind of interesting, right?

Hello Director,

Maybe look here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Galactic Civilizations III\data\English\Text\StarNamesText.xml

The StarNamesText.XML looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<StringTableList
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="../../Schema/Lib/StringTable.xsd">
<!-- Created with the Gal Civ 3 Editor -->
<!-- StarNamesText.xml -->
 
  <!-- GalCiv2 Names -->
 
  <StringTable>
    <Label>RANDOM_STAR_NAME_0</Label>
    <String>Primus</String>
  </StringTable>
 
  <StringTable>
    <Label>RANDOM_STAR_NAME_1</Label>
    <String>Thindor</String>
  </StringTable>

and continues on down to RANDOM_STAR_NAMEs in the 3000's.

No actual names.

Primus and Thindor would be names

Actually, I wasn't talking about naming stars after people, I have no heartburn over that. I don't want to censor either, but you have to admit there are some pretty puerile names now. I can't remember some of the names, medication I am taking wreaks havoc with my short term memory, but I think one started with bang bang. And I am aware of what Blue-Oyster is referring to about historical names being changed because of sexual references. Those type of names don't bother me either, although I can't see how they would apply to stars, well, maybe a dual star system or black holes. Constellations are a different matter, but they aren't seen in the game. This is a nice game, now that some one has shown how to change the names, maybe I'll try that.

Thanks Ed - as embarrassed as I am to have overlooked that, I am glad to know.

My star name is Llanthasia.  LAWN - thah - zee - ah

Still haven't seen it in game.  How many player named stars are there?

Hi Folgral, I hadn't seen any puerile names, I thought all the names were screened before they were approved. That would probably change my opinion. But now you know where to go to change the ones you dislike.

By my count, there are 3,777 Star Names.

I also find some of the star names to be very irritating and distracting. I like a serious universe, at least a believable universe, not a joke galaxy or a tribute to all of the family members of the founders. And I am a founder myself.

I agree completely, and although you can go through the some 3500 names in the datafile, I would prefer a star rename function for things that are in my ZoC so if I really don't like seeing a star named "GAMERZ" I can just change it on the fly!

So basically, you are saying that you want the programmers to put a function in game to negate the whole funding reward that allowed the game to be created in the first place?!?!  I don't see a Founders icon on your post, so you didn't pay but want to waste dev time to negate the paid for funding reward!  Too bad.  Suck it up.

I agree with Blue_Oyster.  There are lots of real names for things in the real world that I find stupid, but I don't cry about it.  Create it, discover it, whatever...  you get to name it and everyone calls it that.

I know this doesn't entirely fit AuraBoy's OP, but if I'm not mistaken, the plan is (or was) to allow stars to be renamed just like planets can be renamed. I believe Paul said this in a stream (probably more than a month ago).

So, if this happens, you could make changes in game--though these wouldn't affect the XML.

I already rename all planets as part of my play style, so I hope the option to rename stars and black holes and nebulas et cetera becomes possible. Not because I have anything against founder's star names (though I prefer the more serious names), but because I always rename the stuff I colonize and conquer.

And jbbrower, telling RadioBlues "Too bad. Suck it up." is really uncalled for and totally unnecessary. Just because you disagree with RadioBlues's opinion doesn't give you the right to be a bully.

Silly star names are dangerous.

Recently on a Drengin Titan.

Jr X O  - Navigator, Location?

Navigator - too close to YouStupid

*zap*

Jr X O - Navigator, what do you see?

New Navigator - All I can see is YouStupid

*zap*

X O enters - what hell is going on in here

Jr X O - I was asking our location and they called me stupid

X O - you moron, that was what a founder named his star

*zap*

Yes, that is something I would personally like to see. Sorry you think the founder's badge is required to formulate a suggestion about the game - but if you look at the year I joined the Stardock community, you will see that I have been playing their games for many years and the money I've spent would well exceed that of a founder title. If you really really truly believe that the point of being in a beta is to avoid providing suggestions/feedback unless you have a founder badge, I would conclude that you have more money than sense.

I don't see the big deal about star names, you have to mouse over them to see them, how distracting can it be?  Scrolling through the list of approved names, I don't see any that irritate me.

When star naming went live you were NOT allowed any spaces or capitalization, and if your name was rejected, you could not re-submit a second one. The system that was put in place by the developers was not thoughtful or considerate, in fact, it was just plain stupid. There are a lot of unfortunate names as a result. These were not the names that founders wanted, but what they were forced to come up with given the rules. Even though the rules were changed, many of the names represent those initial criteria for naming. 

I don't think the ability to block star names is a necessary feature, but I wouldn't have any problem with it. I feel like if you can remove/change star names in the XML file, that should be a decent enough solution.

I believe every planet around that star uses the star's name.

What the OP is asking for seems like a lot of effort for something they could do themselves by editing the XML. I'd rather see the effort spent on real enhancements to the game. Pretty sure there will be a MOD out removing silly names within a week of release anyway then they don't even have to do that.